Stone Cold (32 page)

“
Hey everybody! Conall said we all have to leave so he can go to sleep. Hey I know! We can all go to my apartment and make all the noise we want!”

Several minutes later, he was alone in the apartmen
t. There was nothing left to come in between him and sleep. Not even Hannah.

*****

The next several months were a blur. Addison was trying to be on her best behavior and she’d cut back on the amount of time she’d been spending with friends. Conall was seeing a side of her he hadn’t seen before. She’d become more responsible and had tamed her wild side to the point of almost being boring. They still went out but it was usually just the two of them and she’d stopped drinking to excess. He started to feel very close to her and they were able to have genuine, loving conversations about important meaningful things. It wasn’t long before she started talking about getting engaged.

Conall wanted to get married but he knew it wasn’t to
Addison. He’d come to love Addison but it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to be in love with the girl he’d eventually marry and in his mind there was only one girl who he felt this way about. That’s why he went to the ferry landing again in April hoping she’d finally be there at the same time.

He waited the usual hour but Hannah was a no show. He had a bad feeling about where she was. Josh had probably proposed to her by now and if she
accepted then she would never come to meet him again. If she declined, she may have been held up for another reason. Either way, Conall was going to have to wait another year to try again. He was also going to have to make a decision about Addison.

The closer it got to
the end of his leave, the more she pressured him to propose.

“Conall, you’re going back soon and I know I’ve said this before and I don’t want to pressure you or anything but I think we should get engaged. We’ve been dating for awhile and we’re at the point of either getting married or breaking up.”

He was so tired of hearing those words. He felt trapped, like he was being given an ultimatum. If he were heartless, he would tell her it was time to breakup. He was tired – tired of war, of leave, of not seeing Hannah. All he wanted was peace.

Addison
had finally worn him down.

The last thing he thought about before he answered was, “What’s the worst that could happen? We can have a long engagement and I’ll keep praying that I meet Hannah during it. People break engagements all the time.”

“I just don’t see why you haven’t proposed to me already anyway.”

“Okay
, let’s do it. Let’s get engaged.”

“Oh Conall, do you mean it? I can’t believe it! But you have to ask me the right way! Come on, pleeaassee?”

He sighed as he thought about what he’d just agreed to. Her enthusiasm was over the top, especially after she’d just prodded him to do it.

“I don’t have a ring yet since this was not on my agenda today.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care. We can worry about that later. Just assume the position.”

Conall slowly got down on one knee and taking her hand in his he asked,”
Addison, will you marry me?”

He was barely able to get the words out before she answered with an emphatic ‘YES’, while jumping up and down in sheer delight.

Two days later he left Addison, who’d already begun wedding planning, to return to Iraq for another four month tour.

Chapter
26

It had been eight
months since Hannah had been in the hospital with an appendicitis attack and she’d made a full recovery. The fall semester of her junior year had also come and gone and she was waiting for Josh to come home on leave. It was winter and everything seemed dead but she was looking forward to him being there since it had been a long time since she’d seen him.

He arrived in early January and wasted no time in making his intentions known. Josh decided to ignore Conall’s advice about when to propose and popped the question less than a week later.

“Hannah, I’ve been thinking about something for a long time and I don’t want to wait any longer. We’ve been dating for years and I love you more than anyone or anything and want to know if you’ll marry me.”

He was sitting on the sofa in her living room and she was putting more logs on the fire when this question caught Hannah completely off guard.

She was glad she had her back to him so that he couldn’t see the shock and terror that must have shown on her face all at the same time.

“I, you, I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this, it’s, I…”

Josh could feel her reluctance without having to see her face.

“
I know this is probably out of left field for you Hannah but to me it’s the next step in our relationship.”

She’d composed herself more but still had her back to him. Before she could speak he’d come up behind her and had his hands on her shoulders.

“Josh I’ve heard everything you’ve said but I still have a year and a half of school left. Then I have to find a job and who knows where I’ll be.”

“I know all of those things and we can have as long of an engagement as you want. I don’t want to pressure you. As far as your job goes, I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Hannah was feeling pressured. She knew she didn’t want to marry Josh and yet she couldn’t bring herself to end things – not yet.

She found
herself wishing it was Conall who was asking her to marry him. If it were him, there wouldn’t have been any hesitation – none whatsoever.

“As much as you want me to say yes right now, I need more time. Let’s enjoy each other’s company during your leave and see how things go – we need time to get reacquainted since you’ve been away for so long.”

Disappointed was an understatement about how Josh felt. He’d wanted her to say yes and then he would’ve known she really was in love with him. Instead, he had the same feeling he’d described to Conall. He had serious doubts about her love for him and concerns that she was in love with another man.

“I guess that’s that then. I’m not going to give up on us Hannah. My love for you is more real than anything I’ve every known. I wish you could say the same about me. We could be so happy together for the rest of our lives.”

Hannah felt a wave of guilt move through her body. She knew he was right – they could be happy together but she would always have that ache for Conall that would be an unspoken silence between them.

“I know what you’re saying is true. Let’s see how the next few months go and I’ll give you my answer then.”

By April, Hannah and Josh had spent nearly every day together. Everything had been going fine until the subject of their annual trip to see Aunt Grace came up.

H
er mother and she had planned to go at their usual time when Josh insisted that he wanted to go with them. She didn’t want him to go because she was still planning on seeing Conall. For some reason, Josh made a big fuss over her not wanting him to go along, so Hannah and her mother decided the best thing to do would be to change their plans and go after he went on tour again.

That wasn’t the only reason they changed their plans. Right after Josh made the big fuss about her not letting him come along
on their visit he’d changed the subject and started talking about Conall.

“
Remember the army ranger Conall I told you about? Well, I forgot to tell you I ran into him before I came home. I told him I was going to propose to you.”

Hannah didn’t know quite what to say. She was caught off guard again at the mention of his name and tried to play it cool.

“You did? That’s odd. What did he say?”

“He told me to wait until I was about to go back on tour so that if you said
no I wouldn’t have to stick around to deal with the rejection.”

She had no idea where Josh was going with this.

“And what did you think of that idea?”

“I said he had a good point and that’s when I asked him if he had a girlfriend who he was in love with.”

Hannah was almost afraid to hear what Conall’s answer was.

“
And what was his response?”

“Conall said he’s in love with a girl and that’s how he plans on proposing to her someday.”

“That’s nice. Good for him.”

The hole in Hannah’s hear
t grew. Even though she knew Josh didn’t mean to, he’d hurt her more with that information than he could ever imagine.

All she could think about was how
hard it would be for her to go to meet him knowing that he was in love with a girl; his girlfriend. If that were true he wouldn’t be there to meet her anyway.

Right after he told her this,
Hannah had a feeling Josh’s second proposal was coming. She knew he was going to try again before he left and sure enough that’s exactly what happened.

He used that story as an opening of all things, to get
down on one knee to ask the question she’d been dreading to hear.

“
It is nice but what I think would be even nicer is for you to make me the happiest guy in the world. For the second time, Hannah, will you marry me?”

She
could think of no reason at the time to fight it any longer. He said she could make it a long engagement and that’s exactly what she planned on doing.

“Yes,” was all she could say.

Josh was elated of course. He couldn’t wait to start telling people he was getting married to the most beautiful girl he’d ever known.

Chapter 27

Ever since
Hannah had accepted Josh’s proposal, she’d felt numb. She’d missed her opportunity to meet Conall and Josh’s next tour was delayed from April until October.

There were plenty of
parties to attend before he left and through all of it she smiled on cue and put on a happy face as they told everyone the news.

She began
her senior year of college and Josh finally deployed for his next tour. This time he’d be gone for a year and instead of feeling sad about it she felt relief.

He’d been pressuring her to set a wedding date
which she wasn’t about to do for a long time if she could help it. She’d be graduating in the spring and he wanted to marry her no more than a year after that.

Hannah had
something different in mind. First of all, she wanted a different man, and second of all she wanted to find a job and have a career before tying the knot.

Ever since the night
she’d gotten engaged, she’d been dying to nonchalantly ask Josh about Conall but couldn’t figure out how to bring him up without raising suspicion. She hoped he’d bring him up on his own.

For all she knew he was engaged or worse. Maybe he’d gotten married to this girlfriend he supposedly loved. That was something she immediately put out of her mind. There was no way he would do
that, not without meeting her at least once to put any feelings they still had for each other to the test.

Hannah was extremely busy at school.
She used this as her excuse for why she hadn’t set a wedding date yet and for not starting the planning. Josh wanted to get married in October 2006 when he’d be done his current tour but that was too soon after graduation for her. To keep him from pushing the issue, she finally set the wedding date for October 20, 2007. That was a year and a half after graduation and she hoped it was enough time for things to progress with Conall so she could end her engagement to Josh.

The
fall semester seemed to fly by and before she knew it Hannah was nearly through her last one. She never bothered to check the date of her graduation and as luck would have it, it was scheduled for Sunday, April 16. The college had another event scheduled for that Saturday so they’d moved graduation up a day.

Her parents would never go for her missing her own graduation after four years of her hard work and the money they’d invested. She thought about dressing in her cap and gown and posing for pictures with her parents and then slipping out to go to NYC to meet Conall but the time factor didn’t work.

Gina tried to help her find a way to meet Conall and be at her graduation too but nothing seemed to work. She even thought of going to meet him herself and bringing him with her to the graduation but Gina was graduating too. As much as she loved Hannah and wanted to help her out, she didn’t want to miss her own graduation either.

It was no use. Hannah had no choice but to forego her chance to meet Conall to attend her graduation. To make her choice seem like the right one, she told herself that he was probably on tour anyway and she would miss her graduation for nothing.

Josh was still on tour and he wouldn’t be able to see her get her degree but that was okay with her. At least she wouldn’t be pressured to tell him how the wedding planning was coming along. Other than setting the date, she’d done absolutely nothing.

Graduation day came and went. She celebrated with Lana and Gina by attending several parties around
campus. They had a lot of fun but she couldn’t help feeling sad at times about not being able to see Conall. Most people would’ve given up long before this. Hannah might have too if she didn’t still feel the enormous amount of chemistry between them whenever she heard or said his name.

Two months after graduation, Hannah received a job offer
for a computer programming position with an international finance company based in Philadelphia. She accepted the offer and couldn’t wait to begin the next phase of her life.

Chapter
28

Since his engagement, Conall had been on a four month tour, was home for a four month leave, and was about read
y to begin another tour with a different special operations six man unit. It was January 2006 and this tour was going to be his longest yet. It was supposed to be over in October so once again he already knew he was going to miss seeing Hannah.

He couldn’t help thinking that if he hadn’t been in the Army, he would’ve been able to meet her
many years ago. It was a difficult position to be in. He loved his job. He was made to be a soldier but he wanted to be with Hannah too.

Conall
hadn’t seen Josh since he told him he was going to propose to Hannah. He didn’t want to see him and have to hear that she’d said yes. He didn’t want Josh to tell him any details which he was inclined to do and he especially didn’t want to know the date of their impending nuptials.

Conall had more important things on his mind.
He and Ryan were on a top secret mission. Along with the special operations unit, they were to transport six American scientists into Iraq and protect them at all costs while they conducted their work. This would be for at least the next 10 months or more.

All of his missions had been important but none had lasted this long and had been in need of the highest level of security possible. The scientists were
working on something that only military personnel with top secret security classification knew about.

Conall met with the team to discuss the parameters of the mission as
he’d laid them out. It took hours of careful planning on his part to determine the safest and most secure way to transport the scientists so they could enter the country unnoticed. From there, they’d be taken to an American facility where they could perform their work. It would be Conall and the team’s responsibility to ensure their complete safety and anonymity until their work was complete and in the proper hands.